View full sizeBruce Ely/The OregonianFriends and family of 18-year-old Borisshell Washington mourn at her funeral in early June, the same week the Jefferson High School senior was supposed to graduate. She was an unintended target in what may have been a gang-related shooting, police said. Portland's 21 homicides in 2009 marked a nearly 40-year low, but the year's killings included extremely disturbing cases that remain seared into the community's consciousness.

The year began with the city's largest mass shooting in downtown Portland, which claimed the lives of two young students and wounded seven others.

In late May, residents made the wrenching discovery of two young children in the Willamette River who police say were thrown off the Sellwood Bridge by their mother.

The year wrapped up with an unusual spree of domestic murder-suicides throughout the metropolitan region and the mysterious killing of an assistant federal public defender in her home.

"The biggest thing about this year, the numbers are down," said Portland detective division Sgt. Kraig McGlathery, "but the homicides we had were real doozies."

Portland's 21 violent deaths are the city's fewest since 1971, when there were 15.

That mirrors a national trend. New York City and San Francisco, for example, had record low numbers of homicides, and nationwide, homicides fell 10 percent in the first half of 2009, compared with the same period the prior year, FBI statistics show.

Overall crime in Portland -- including aggravated assaults, robberies and burglaries -- was also down 10 percent.

"Part of the decline in crime can be linked to just the graying of America," said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston. "As the senior citizen population grows, health care costs may rise, but crime levels tend to decline."

Across the metro area, Clackamas and Clark counties saw fewer killings, yet Washington County bucked the trend: Its homicide count spiked to 17, up from an annual average of eight in the past decade.

What stood out in Washington County and the region were back-to-back murder-suicides involving husbands and wives, estranged boyfriends and girlfriends, and their children. Between Nov. 5 and Dec. 2, 18 people lost their lives. All eight male suspects committed suicide; seven women were killed; two young children were shot and killed along with their mothers and an adult son died trying to protect his mother.

Two killings occurred at the victims' place of work: Legacy MetroLab in Tualatin, where Teresa Beiser, 36, was killed by her estranged husband; and a Hillsboro Great Clips hair salon, where Sheena Mendoza, 20, was gunned down by her ex-boyfriend.

"It was a crazy month we had," said Hillsboro Lt. Michael Rouches. He said his agency has recommitted to making sure advocates and officers provide the earliest intervention for domestic violence victims. "Obviously, domestic violence remains a big problem in our county. We have to be that astute for all the little cases, because you don't know what's going to end up as the big ones."

The governor also took notice, asking Dr. Bruce Goldberg, director of Oregon's Department of Human Services, to meet with leaders in the field this month to consider how to improve the state's response to domestic violence. Goldberg said he'd like to create a statewide domestic violence fatality review board modeled after one in Multnomah County.

"There's a lot that can be learned and then be put into action to prevent deaths," Goldberg said, noting that a third of the state's child abuse cases involve domestic violence in the home. The state will assess whether additional funding is needed.

"Multnomah County has a great process that I think needs to be emulated and expanded around the state," Goldberg said.

Most victims male

Portland's victims ranged in age from two 4-year-old boys, one fatally shot by his father and another who drowned in the Willamette River, to a 64-year-old man stabbed to death in a public housing apartment.

Most of the victims were males who died from gunshot wounds.

Notably, only one of Portland's homicides resulted from gang violence, despite an increase in shooting calls -- but it was one that took the life of an unintended target, Jefferson High School senior Borisshell Washington. The 18-year-old was gunned down in a Southeast Portland park. There were no officer-involved fatal shootings in Portland. The first homicide of the year was committed by a 92-year-old man, believed to be the oldest murder defendant in Oregon history, and the last by a woman already convicted of manslaughter in the stabbing death of another woman 16 years earlier.

One of the most disturbing cases was the death of 4-year-old Eldon Jay Rebhan Smith. His drowning and the attempted drowning of his 7-year-old sister not only traumatized the families involved, but also the people who heard the cries of the children thrown off the Sellwood Bridge and the citizens and law enforcement officers who tried to rescue them.

At Eldon's memorial service May 31, Jason Smith leaned over the open wooden casket of the 4-year-old boy as if he were tucking his son into bed for the last time. After placing Eldon's Batman outfit beside him, Smith knelt next to him, shaking his head as he caressed his son's hair.

"I'll spend every day of the rest of my life missing him and doing whatever I can to keep Eldon's memory alive," his father said. "I'm blessed that I have my miracle girl here."

Amanda Jo Stott-Smith remains in custody, accused of drowning Eldon and the attempted drowning of her daughter, in an act of revenge during her weekend visitation with the children, who lived with their dad. "Ms. Stott-Smith told us she purposefully dropped both children off the Sellwood Bridge into the Willamette River," a Portland detective wrote in a search warrant last fall for the mother's cell phone records.

"Cases like that remind us that women, as well as men, are capable of using violence like that," said Neil Websdale, director of the federally funded National Domestic Violence Fatality Review Initiative and a criminal justice professor at Northern Arizona University.

Familicide

In Stott-Smith's case, there had been a history of domestic violence. Her family had raised concerns in court the previous summer about her ability to care for her children because of alcohol abuse. Temporary custody of the children had been awarded to the father.

But in other domestic violence killings that followed, there was sometimes no documented history of abuse. Several involved suspects with no criminal records.

Chiquita Rollins, Multnomah County's domestic violence coordinator who tracks domestic killings in the state, was stunned by the late-year string of domestic murder-suicides in the region. "I kept thinking, 'Oh, it will end soon, it will end soon,' and then there was another one," she recalled.

Though violence between intimate partners nationally has declined dramatically over the past 30 years, the rate of murder-suicides involving a spouse and one or more children in a family seems to be rising, said Websdale, whose book "Familicidal Hearts" is due out this month.

His research found that during the 1980s, the rate per 100,000 population of familicide was roughly 0.0005, increased to 0.015 in the 1990s, and between 2000 and 2007, hit 0.03. "Those are small numbers, but they're significant increases," he argues.

The fatal shooting of Tameka Medina and her 4-year-old son, Ashawn, by her estranged boyfriend occurred shortly after she moved out of the home they had shared, considered one of the most dangerous times for victims.

Yet others can be spurred by a calamity in the relationship or humiliation -- perhaps a husband's unemployment or foreclosure on a home -- in which the man is depressed and somehow perceives that he's failed as provider, lover or father, and kills almost out of a sense of not knowing what else to do, Websdale said.

Unsolved cases

For those cases that remain unsolved -- including Borisshell Washington's shooting at a crowded barbecue, the strangulation of an assistant federal public defender and the death of a 52-year-old man struck by a bullet while asleep in his bedroom -- the lack of information can be agonizing, families say.

Relatives in many of these cases made public pleas this year for tips that would lead to an arrest.

Nancy Bergeson's sister, Julie McCormick, said the family is troubled by many unanswered questions in the public defender's killing.

"It's the 'Who?'" McCormick said, "but the bigger question is the 'Why?'"